


Straight and Narrow

by halfmetalbitch



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Connor Deserves Happiness, Connor Has Trouble Processing Feelings, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Jealous Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Mutual Pining, POV Second Person, Pining, Plot What Plot, Protective Connor, Snapshots, Whump, deTECTIVE READER, plot if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:15:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26491012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfmetalbitch/pseuds/halfmetalbitch
Summary: Connor is your partner, and being secretly in love with your partner is hard.1.) You're assigned as the honeypot on a mission, and Connor as your backup. Things don't go according to plan.2.) You're shot, and Connor comes to the rescue.
Relationships: Connor (Detroit: Become Human)/Reader
Comments: 9
Kudos: 257





	1. Honeypot

The room was choked with bodies draped in expensive dark suits and silk dresses. Servers navigated the floor, their trays heavy with hors d’oeuvres and bubbling flutes of champagne.

_Don’t mind if I do,_ you thought, reaching out to steal a glass away from the platter. You deserved at least one glass of expensive champagne for being put through this bullshit. It was the least Fowler could do for you. In fact, you were fully expecting a bottle of wine on your desk for going above and beyond the line of duty when this case was finally over.

You turned away from the crowd, catching your reflection in the mirror trim around the doorway to the ballroom. As you drank and scanned the crowd in the mirror, your gaze snagged on another’s. Warm, alert brown speared you to your spot. Your heart leapt into your throat, and you struggled to finish swallowing the effervescent liquid without choking.

Connor.

He stood nearly rigid, engaged in conversation with another android, a twin champagne flute grasped in his hand, you assumed, in an effort to blend into the crowd of aristocrats.

If your partner kept looking at you like that, he was going to give the whole gig away. You could practically feel him monitoring your vitals, scanning you for any sign of discomfort or danger. Had he seen your heartrate stutter? Your temperature rise from the heat of his gaze?

_“I do not like this, Detective,”_ he had stated matter-of-factly after several long minutes of tense silence when you’d been given your assignment. You were to be a honeypot, and Connor was to provide support.

You’d snorted, amused by his concern. _“You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it,”_ you’d told him with a shrug. His LED had flickered orange as a flame at that.

“ _This assignment poses unnecessary risk to your safety.”_

You’d offered him a sympathetic smile, placing a hand on his arm. His gaze had fallen to where you touched him, LED cycling yellow again, then back to your face, his expression very serious. “ _Danger’s part of the job, Connor. But I couldn’t have asked for a better partner to watch my back.”_

A hand at your elbow and a voice calling your name pulled your attention from the mirror. You turned, a wide smile already forming on your face.

“Ricky,” you greeted warmly.

Your mark.

Ricky gazed down at you, a disconcertingly charming grin on his face. He took your hand in his own, leaning down to press a kiss on each of your cheeks. His dark stubble scratched your face, and the smell of his cologne enveloped you.

You’d been buttering him up for a while in the hopes of getting some leads on a drug ring, and tonight you were supposed to seal the deal, so to speak. Who would’ve thought that one of Detroit’s biggest philanthropists was pushing Red Ice?

You pressed your body closer to his. Let the seduction begin.

***

“May I get you another drink?” Ricky asked, pointing to your empty champagne flute.

You leaned in conspiratorially, flashing your cleavage. “I had another kind of refreshment in mind.”

His golden blond brow raised. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

You placed a hand on his knee and squeezed. “I was thinking something _red._ ”

Ricky’s lips twisted in a wolfish grin. He leaned in, so close that you could feel his breath against your ear. You struggled not to shudder at the sensation.

“Is that why your little android lapdog can’t take his eyes off you?” he whispered into your ear.

It was a battle to keep the soft smile on your face and the panic out of your voice. “What are you talking about?” you asked, hoping you made a convincing picture of innocence, but you just felt dumb as the words come out.

“I’m not stupid,” Ricky hissed. “Or blind.”

You felt something cold and hard press into your side, and when you glanced down you saw the muzzle of a small handgun discretely digging into the fabric of your dress. You swallowed thickly. You knew Connor would have noticed that—you’re sure he knew something was wrong the moment Ricky leaned into you and your heartrate spiked to dangerous levels.

“I could use some air,” Ricky said. “How about you?”

You dropped the sex kitten act.

“I’m not going anywhere with you, you fu—“

“Ah, ah, ah,” Ricky chided. “Let’s not make a scene.”

He herded you through the crowd and into a hallway with his gun at your back. You weighed your options: if you tried to slip into the crowd, innocent people might get hurt. And if you tried to reach for the gun in your thigh holster, there was no way you’d be fast enough to avoid him noticing and dropping you first.

“Damn it,” you cursed under your breath.

Ricky pulled you through a doorway and into a stairwell. He dragged you up a set of stairs with a bruising grip around your arm, but you resisted, using your body weight to slam his back against the wall.

He grunted, but didn’t drop his gun. “Stupid bitch!” he cried, whipping the butt of the pistol across your cheek.

“Argh,” you gasped, landing against the concrete floor, hot pain radiating from your cheekbone and blurring your vision.

Twelve steps below, a door opened and clanged closed. “Ricky!” called a familiar voice, a voice you loved hearing but had never been _more_ happy to hear than now.

You glanced over the stair ledge to see Connor below, his LED cycling a steady yellow. His hands were raised in surrender, but his eyes were all for you. You could see all the calculations hiding behind his dark gaze, feel him take it all in—the hair that had been pulled violently from your chignon, the darkening bruises from rough hands, the red and purple blossoming along your cheekbone, and the gun trained right at you.

You saw his gaze harden to white-hot steel as he turned it on your attacker.

“You don’t have to do this,” Connor said calmly to Ricky. “Put the gun down.”

“Shut up, you stupid piece of plastic,” Ricky hissed. “I don’t take orders from _androids_.”

Slowly, bit by bit, you inched your skirt up, desperate to feel cold metal under your fingers. Your partner was the negotiator—this was his element—and so you stayed silent and focused on getting your hands on your weapon.

“Ricky,” Connor began, “are you really going to throw everything away—your company, your fortune, your freedom? Just put the gun down, and we can talk.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Ricky’s hand lowered. Then, with a vicious smile on his face, he raised it again and pointed it right at Connor.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think I will.”

His finger found the trigger.

An explosion echoed through the stairwell, ringing in your ears. In the hallway outside, a few screams broke through the thrum of music.

You lowered the gun in your hand, it’s muzzle smoking. Ricky stumbled a step, then his body fell backward, collapsing with a thud against the red-spattered wall.

You breathed out, resting the back of your head against the cool concrete of the stairs beneath you. Hurried footsteps climbed the steps, and Connor called your name softly.

“You’re injured,” he said, and when you opened your eyes, you were met with his worried expression as he knelt over you.

He swept your messy hair from your face to inspect your wound, and you winced as he brushed the damaged skin.

“It’s all right,” you said, brushing him off and sitting up. “Being pistol whipped is basically first base at this point in my career.”

He didn’t even crack a smile at your poor attempt at humor. Instead, his frown deepened.

“Detective…I’m sorry. I made a miscalculation,” he said, and then, with more emotion, “This is all my fault.”

You placed your hands on his shoulders. “Hey. It’s _not_ your fault. That guy was already onto me.”

He didn’t meet your gaze, seemingly lost in whatever analysis was going on in his head.

“Look at me,” you said. He glanced up, his eyes full of so many conflicted emotions that it physically hurt you. “Next time, just trust me, okay?”

A small crease appeared on Connor’s forehead. “The way he touched you—I—“

Connor’s LED spun yellow once, and his gaze seemed far away for a moment, interrupting your conversation.

“Back up has arrived,” he stated. “We should meet them downstairs.”

You sighed, your gaze lingering on your partner for a beat too long before standing. What had he been about to say?

“Let’s go,” you said, offering him a smile.


	2. Hemorrhage

_Well, shit_ , you think as your back becomes damp and sticky against the asphalt beneath you.

Your ears are still ringing from the gunshot, as though they're stuffed with thick cotton. Who the fuck would have thought that you would get injured not in the line of duty, but getting a cup of coffee a few blocks from the station. It was just your luck to witness a robbery in progress while you were trying to mind your damn business and get back to your paperwork.

This really wasn’t how you expected your night to go.

Your vision twists like water circling a drain. _Concentrate,_ you urge yourself. You could feel the beginnings of shock bearing down on you, in the shaking of your hands, the coolness of your skin, the inability to just fucking _think dammit._

Your phone.

Your phone is in your pocket.

Connor.

Your partner is at the station. You have to get him _here._

You reach down, fumble with your jacket until you feel the lump in your pocket. The pain in your chest is burning, all-consuming to the point you think you’ll black out. But you push through because you _must_ , and drag the square device from your coat.

You swipe your thumb up, bring it to you ear and hear blessed ringing.

“Hello, Detective,” Connor answers on the second ring. He sounds so happy to hear from you even though the idiot just saw you ten minutes ago.

“Connor,” you choke out.

Your voice is so small, and you hadn’t realized until that moment just how much it hurt to breathe. You’d been shot before, sure, but never in the chest. Now you feel fear, pure and primal, clawing at you.

“Detective, are you all right?” he asks from the other end, something akin to human worry in his voice.

You could hear the background noise that accompanied the station—the chatter, the yelling, the clinking of coffee cups. You were sinking into the sound, disappearing.

“I’m shot.” Your voice trails off. “Ping my phone…”

You hear Hank’s voice in the background. “Connor!” he grouses. “Where you goin’ in such a hurry?”

“GPS locates you at Coffee Palace. I can be there in three minutes,” he says. “Detective…please hold on.”

You want to answer but can’t as darkness sweeps like a cloak over you. You hear the clatter of your phone hitting pavement, then nothing.

It could have been a moment or an hour later when you feel hands on you. Your eyes open, heavy as weights, and two faces hover over you.

“Fuck,” Hank curses, “she’s white as a sheet.”

You glance down and your button-up is ripped open, exposing your leaking wound as well as most of your clothed breasts. It’s a clean wound with a perfect little circle in the middle, but the flesh surrounding it is purpling and bloody.

You glance back up, meeting calculating brown eyes. Connor’s LED blares red, red, red.

“This isn’t how I thought you’d see my tits for the first time,” you say, voice gravelly.

“Christ,” Hank says with a grunt. “Only you could make a joke while bleeding out.”

Of course, Connor is too engrossed in devising a way to fix you to react to your comment. It’s a shame, really.

“Detective, you’re hemorrhaging,” Connor diagnoses.

 _No shit_ , you want to say, but don’t. His eyes flicker over you, and you know he’s seeing and analyzing things in a way no human could.

“You’ve lost too much blood already, and your heartrate is too low. The bullet passed through your chest cavity and exited. You’re in shock.”

You listen to him rattle off the extent of your injury, and there’s something calming about his voice as he does it. There’s a rustle of material as he shrugs off his jacket.

“I’m going to apply pressure to the wound to stop the bleeding.” He hesitates, brows crumpling. “This will hurt. I’m sorry.”

Connor presses his jacket against your chest, and you know he knows the exact amount of pressure to exert to effectively stymy your bleeding, but it feels like he’s trying to kill you faster.

Agony shoves its way into your nose and throat until you can’t breathe, until you gag around it. You claw at Connor’s hand pressing you down, a strangled scream ripping out of you. You sob, trying to push him away even as blackness creeps into the edge of your vision.

Connor whispers your name, it falls from his lips like a prayer, but you can’t hold on any longer.

***

You awake to rhythmic beeping.

Flowers meet your bleary gaze, and beneath them a card rests on the side table. It’s propped open, and you can just make out the words written in chicken scratch within: _You better live, Tits McGee, or so help me, I’ll kill you_. _– Hank_

You snort, wincing at the sensation. Your whole body aches with dull pain, like you’ve been trampled.

Oh, yeah. Gunshot wound. Bleeding out. Almost dying. Connor coming to the rescue.

_That._

“How are you feeling, Detective?”

Connor’s soft voice shocks you, and you look past the flowers to the chair in the corner of the room. Its upholstering has seen better days, but Connor’s presence makes it look not quite so drab. How long has he been sitting there?

“Alive,” you answer, voice scratchy from disuse.

Connor nods, standing. You try not to blanch as you notice he’s wearing his jacket again, and it’s stained with your dark blood. He steps toward you, offers you a glass of water he retrieves from the side table. You take it, drink deeply.

His eyes scan you, and you know he’s monitoring your vitals—probably has been the whole time you’ve been in this bed. God, you probably look like absolute shit.

His LED shines a steady yellow, the only bright thing in the dingy, colorless room. You want to banish that color, long to see cool blue. Connor suddenly looks so small, so unsure standing preternaturally still next to you.

You’re his partner—you know his strengths and weaknesses. You know that when it comes to taking action, defusing situations, saving lives he knows exactly what to do. It was the support that came after that he hadn’t quite figured out yet. He still struggled with _feelings_.

You reach for his hand.

“I’m okay, Connor,” you tell him. Well, _okay_ might have been a stretch. But not dead. Not dead was good.

He places his fingers in yours, and you delight at the smooth, warm feel of them, the weight in your palm. You rub a thumb over the back of his hand, surprised to feel it textured beneath your touch. You glance down and see the synthetic skin is gouged.

You think back, try to remember what happened, but your memory is still fuzzy. You recall the pain that made you black out, the pressure of his jacket against your chest and how you screamed and struggled against him.

“God, did I do that to you?” You spare a glance up at him and there’s an unreadable look in his eyes as he studies the nail-scratches.

“I was hurting you,” he says, tension in his voice.

“You were saving my life, Connor,” you say forcefully. You squeeze his hand, forcing him to bring his gaze back to you. “You did save my life.”

He nods slowly.

“What are you feeling right now?” you ask him. It’s a question that’s helped him untangle things in the past.

He’s quiet for a moment.

“When I found you, you had lost nearly two pints of blood. You had only a twenty-seven percent chance of survival. You were so…cold.” His brows furrow, as if he were recalling every small detail of the scene. “I didn’t know if you would wake up. And everything felt so…empty.”

You smile up at him sympathetically.

“Is that how you felt when my biocomponents have been damaged in the past?” he asks.

You think back to all the times Connor’s rushed into danger, careless of any harm that might come to him. Back to the times when he _had_ been hurt.

“When you’re in the field I feel terrified you’ll get hurt, that it’ll be something irreparable. Terrified it will be the last time I see you…or hear your voice. If you were gone…” You look away from him, to the darkness outside the window. The truth has a habit of bubbling up, but you can’t let it spill out now. Not yet. “Yeah. Empty.”

You brave a glance back to him, and his expression is thoughtful. He strokes the back of your knuckles.

“You should rest,” he tells you.

You nod. Yes, rest. He’s right, as per usual.

“Thank you, Connor,” you whisper. You mean it.

He smiles. It’s such a rare sight, and you soak it in, etch it into your memory. “Good night, Detective,” he says.


End file.
